And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
          Not shaking the grass.
- Ezra Pound

Among the many resolutions Ankhie makes every New Year, one remains consistent. Live more. I make this resolution as though it were a vow to be renewed. All of us, ALL of us lead busy lives – overscheduled, overworked, always tired, stretched too thin – our lives, you say, are already too full!  But there is a world of difference between busy lives and full lives – one depletes, the other enriches. Think of a typical evening, hurrying home from work, shuffling the kids from one activity to another, making dinner, doing laundry, paying bills, falling into bed exhausted but too tired to sleep: that’s busy. Now think of another evening, standing under a starlit winter sky, the only sounds the wind in the trees and your own breath – the Milky Way so close, so bright you feel as though you could fall up into it: that’s full.

Resolutions, no matter how sincere or well intended, are often put aside or forgotten in the face of those very real and necessary day-to-day tasks.  How so we make the shift from maintenance living to full living? How do we become more of who we want to be? As with all things, a ritual can help to focus priorities, and affirm commitments. The following is from Karen Harrison’s The Herbal Alchemist:

Innovation Ritual

When we want to make changes and new beginnings in our lives, we often must first make room for them by releasing old habits, people, or ways in which we currently use our energies that are no longer working for us. This can be in any area of your life, so before doing this ritual, first begin by looking at the person, thought pattern, job, or lifestyle that you feel is hampering your efforts. Decide what you need to release in favor of new thoughts or perceptions that will allow you to alter your attitude and ingrained reactions. This will give you the mental space to plant new roots of behavior and to have them to grow in your life. Next, determine how you want to grow or change: spiritually, monetarily, emotionally, physically or intellectually. Once you know where you need to let go and what you wish to change about your life, you will be ready to do the ritual.

The supplies you will need for this spell are the following:

• electric blue candle and candle holder
• Incense burner
• calligraphy ink
• green quill
• piece of parchment
• an object that represents the new you (see Note)
• three- or four-inch-long black silk or cotton (not polyester)
• small box (such as a matchbox)
• Uranus Oil (see Planetary Formulas in appendix e, Formulas and Recipes)
• matches
• Uranus Incense (see Planetary Formulas in appendix e, Formulas and Recipes)

On an evening when you will not be disturbed, arrange your altar with your candle at the left top edge; your Incense burner at the right top edge; your ink, quill and parchment at the right bottom edge; and your”new you” object at the left bottom edge, leaving the center for the black cord and small box. For the moment, just lay the cord coiled in the center of your altar. Cast your circle or center your energy. Anoint your candle with your Uranus oil, from the bottom of the candle to the wick, and light it. Light your Incense charcoal from the candle flame. Let it ignite almost completely across, then set it down on a bed of insulating sand in your
Incense burner. Place a small spoonful of your Uranus Incense in the center of the charcoal.
In the center of the piece of parchment, draw with your ink and quill a symbol that represents the thing that you are releasing from your life that has been holding it back. If this is a person, you can draw his Astrological Sign or initials, for example. If it is your employment, draw the logo of the company or its initials; if it is a bad habit, draw a simple image that represents this lifestyle choice. Next, around this symbol, draw a square, which represents the limitations that this has set on you. Set this parchment sigil in the center of your altar. Pick up the black cord and knot the two cut ends together, concentrating on the problems or limitations that you have encountered with this person, job, or lifestyle, placing the energy of the problem in the knot. Lay the cord in a circle around the parchment sigil in the center of your altar. For a few moments, continue to focus on the problem while you also become aware of your breathing. Each time you exhale, imagine yourself exhaling the hold that this problem has on you. Feel yourself becoming lighter and more relaxed. After each exhalation, say, “I release you.” Work on this release for about three minutes, or until you feel very relaxed and light.

Next, pick up your cord and carefully hold the knot in the flame of the candle, igniting the knot and burning away the problem. Set the remainder of the cord in the box. Next, holding the parchment by the very edge, ignite it with the candle flame. Let it burn toward your fingers and go out. If it burns dramatically, you can blow on it lightly to control the flame and blow it out while concentrating on release. Place any unburned parchment in the box with the burned cord and put the box to the side. When you have finished with this part of the ritual, relax for a few moments, enjoying the release and lightness.

Now take in your hands the “new you” object, concentrating again on your breathing and what you are bringing into your life. With each inhalation, breathe in energy, motivation, and optimism. As you exhale, breathe on the object, filling and charging it with this new, exciting change. After you have filled it, set the energies by anointing it with your Uranus oil, then hold it in the smoke of your Uranus Incense and place the object next to the candle. Leave the candle to burn down all the way and go outside to dig a hole to bury the box with the parchment ashes and cord. Bury the box, firmly tamp down the dirt, and walk away, never looking back. Feel the freedom and lightness.
The next morning, take the jewelry from the altar and go to a mirror. Watch yourself adorn yourself with the jewelry, focusing on the changes it represents. If you have chosen an art object, take it up from the altar and place it in a location in your home where it will be prominent, being mindful of the changes it represents.

* An object that represents the new you: This object can be a piece of jewelry with a clear quartz, rutilated quartz, amazonite, or kunzite stone set in it, or a small, lovely art object that you feel sums up the changes that you will make. If you use an art object, you will later set this piece in a prominent place in your home after the ritual so that you can see it every day to reinforce your changes. If you have chosen a piece of jewelry, you will wear it every day after you have charged it in your ritual to keep drawing that innovative energy to you.

** Note: In this ritual, you are literally “playing with fire,” so be careful. You may wish to also have a plate on your altar on which to set the burning parchment in case you get nervous. That way you can let it continue to burn without scorching your fingers. Also, since you are letting the candle burn all the way down, which will take several hours, your altar needs to be set up in a room that is closed off to all children and pets. You do not want to set your altar up near curtains or other flammable things. Your jewelry or object is going to be on the altar next to the candle, and you don’t want it covered with melted wax in the morning. Be sure that the candleholder you choose has a bottom that can contain melted wax. You may wish to place your jewelry or object in a small container set next to the candle just to be safe.

ap p e n d i x   e
Formulas and Recipes

These formulas are complete unto themselves, but you are encouraged to make them your own by adding or omitting ingredients and fashioning them in such a way as to create personal blends derived from your own intuition, knowledge, and inspiration. I have listed the amounts for each herb, essential oil, and resin in the time-honored unit of parts so that you can make the amount you deem useful for your workings. A part can be one handful, one tablespoon, one-quarter cup—whatever volume you prefer. I would recommend that with any of your essential oils, you consider ten drops to be equal to one part. After you have blended in your essential oils, let your creation sit overnight, then smell it to see if you would like to add more of any oil that you particularly like for a stronger scent according to your personal taste.

Planetary Formulas

Uranus
one part allspice berries, crushed
one part powdered nutmeg
one part gum mastic
one part clove oil
one part elemi oil

The Catskills, for those of you who are unfamiliar, are situated about 2 hours north of New York City, west of the Hudson River and the granite hills of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Catskills are composed mostly of ancient sediments -slate and shale – and when viewed from a distance the mountains display a distinct striated pattern.  They are stunning, and very spooky.

Our friends live in a hollow between foothills. The property was once owned by a fringe religious group, whose members occasionally still turn up asking “Have you found the root cellar?”  No explanation is offered. No clues as to what or where the cellar is, or why they are still interested. They seem harmless, just curious about how the property has changed, but won’t expand on their inquiries.  Because the ground is essentially rock with a thin veneer of soil and grass, a root cellar (or any excavated space) would have been quite a labor, and not quickly abandoned or easily overgrown. Even so, it’s location and purpose is still a mystery. What my friends have found is a chamber built into a  shale shelf behind the neighbor’s house (a likely candidate), a deep and truly unsettling cistern (think The Ring), and a quarry riddled with small animal dens.  The new members of our party were briefed on all of this, and appropriately fascinated.

What is it about these deep and dark places that so enthrall us? In my own extended, childhood backyard there is a well hidden just off an abandoned road. It has no walls above ground level, and is often disguised by fallen branches and leaves. It is a deadly thing. Deep beyond sight, and lined with jagged stone.  If I’m near it, I just can’t stay away – even though the debris makes its exact location a mystery and a threat, every time.  Then there is the old soapstone quarry, just a semi-circular cliff now, rising from the body of a reservoir. In a boat (the only way to access it) the walls are sheer and echo every sound, the water, clear as glass 100 yards away, is black here, and very still. I have never caught a fish there in decades of trying, but it’s always the first place I steer my boat.

It is not at all surprising that these types of places have always been associated with both the spiritual and the paranormal. Wells and springs haunted by faeries or other native spirits became associated with Saints, just as temples were torn down for churches. These places speak to the darker (non-intellectual) part of ourselves for good reason. What that reason is exactly, I’m not informed enough to say, but I did run across this passage in Freddy Silva‘s excellent Legacy of the Gods; the Origin of Sacred Sites and the Rebirth of Ancient Wisdom:

Beneath the holiest of Muslim shrines, the Ka’Ba, there exists a well; sacred springs exist below Temple Mount, just as they do beneath Chartres and Glastonbury Tor; the Gothic cathedrals of Wells, Winchester and Salisbury are built on marshland and designed to  practically float on such architecturally unsuitable terrain; in fact, so many beautiful pieces of sacred architecture sit on ground wholly unsuitable for heavy structures.10 The Egyptian pyramids sit above deep fissures of the earth through which flow hundreds of veins of pressurized water. Even stone circles amid the deserts of Nubia and Libya sit on domes of water, as does the Navajo altar in Monument Valley, situated between two voluminous sand dunes out of which bursts a serpentine gush of cold, clear water.

Without exception, every sacred site is located above or beside water. Water is the foundation of every temple.

Like sacred mountains or landscape temples, holy wells and sacred springs are the epitome of the temple in its natural state, and their hypnotic power has been honored since prehistoric times. Many have been integrated within the boundaries of constructed temples, even represented on the inside by the octagonal church font and its holy water. In his delightful discourse on the holy wells of Cornwall, Paul Broadhurst describes how these places were seen by ancient people “as gateways to the Otherworld, where the vital flow of life-force could be used to penetrate the veil of matter to experience a more formative reality. And so they were used to contact unseen realms where communication could take place with the gods and spirits.”11 Celtic Britain – Ireland in particular – still venerates its ancient holy wells and sacred springs, and anyone who visits these remote shrines is often taken aback by the monastic ambience pervading their surroundings. Direct contact with these special waters have provided healing and inspiration for poet and pilgrim since the days of Sumerian Eridu and its temple honoring Ea, the god of the House of Water, where the ritual of baptism was performed as an integral part of temple initiation.

Ea and the Babylonian post-diluvial god Oannes share identical characteristics and attributes thousands of years later with John the Baptist via the linguistic route of the Hebrew Yohanan, the Greek Ioannes, and finally, the English John. Strange how an identical character emerges in the Biblical narrative 9000 years after the god Oannes emerges from the flood, complete with fish symbology, and an aphorism Wells Cathedral sits over several sacred springs,from which its gets its name.reminiscent of the act of consecration of the Egyptian temple: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” 12

Throughout Britain, western France and northern Iberia, holy wells and springs came under the protection of the Celtic church, essentially a reformation of Druidism, which maintained the tradition of honoring the site to the degree that by the Victorian era physicians in London were still sending patients to be cured at such pagan sanctuaries. On my guided excursions to the wells and springs of Cornwall and southern Dorset I have watched groups of excited and inquiring minds develop an immediate languid state of mind as they approach the waters of St. Catherine’s well at Cerne, once part of a pagan temple honoring the fertility god Cernunnos. Likewise, the holy well at St. Clether, Cornwall, is a unique sanctuary where a channel of water from the outside well house passes directly through the tiny church and under a rough stone altar resembling one of Stonehenge’s trilithons in miniature.

Water at sacred sites is very different in frequency to ordinary water. Tests conducted using infrared spectroscopy show that holy water absorbs light at different frequencies. Holy well water is free from bacteria and contains natural minerals which are known to be beneficial to health and longevity.13 This extremely pure water also exhibits greater properties of spin, and such vortices create an electrical charge which then generate an electromagnetic field, certainly enough to transform it into something different from ordinary liquid.14

Despite the world being covered two-thirds by water, it is still a mysterious element: it grows lighter rather than heavier as it freezes; its surface tension causes it to stick to itself to form a sphere – the shape with the least amount of surface for its volume, requiring the least amount of energy to maintain itself. And yet when its extraneous gases are removed from a drop the size of an inch, it becomes harder than steel.15 Its potency can be enhanced by the use of crystals, particularly quartz, the prime material found in the stone used in temple-building. This has a marked effect on water’s surface tension, and Tibetan physicians have used this combination to make efficacious solutions for their patients.16 Not surprisingly, enlightened kings and queens of old had water transported from sacred sites to their court by means of rock crystal bowls, which served to maintain the energy of the water during transportation. Anyone who has tried this in recent times knows just how it makes the water taste like liquid air.

As a postscript – very near the quarry (across the water to the south) there used to be a spring – just a pipe jutting out of the hillside and spilling into and old horse trough. I remember drinking from it on hot summer days.  The pipe was pulled out and the trough removed years ago (worries over bacteria, etc. etc.) but no water, nothing in fact, has ever come close to that taste. If  I had to reduce the enchantment of childhood to one sensation, that would be it.

The Magick of Dr. John Dee

***

Son of a gentleman server to Henry VIII, John Dee was a true Renaissance magus and one of the most extraordinary individuals of his time. Historian John Aubrey called him “one of the ornaments of his Age.”23 That is saying a lot, for his age was peopled with some of the brightest lights in the history of western civilization: Queen Elizabeth I, Charles V, Francis Bacon, Ben Johnson, Edmund Spenser, GiordanoBruno, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare.

Dee’s unique genius blossomed at Cambridge University, and his fame as a published mathematician propelled him as a young man to academic rock-star status throughout Europe. It also brought him to the attention of the rulers of his world, including the future QueenElizabeth.

He was the master of scores of disciplines. He was a physician, an engineer, a theologian, an astronomer, and cartographer. He invented the nautical instruments and developed the advanced navigational charts that helped make Britannia ruler of the waves. He even coined the term Britannia. A master astrologer, he was allowed to choose the date of Elizabeth’s coronation, and throughout her reign he remainedher friend and counselor.

Because he was fluent in many languages and lectured often on the continent, Elizabeth enlisted his services as a spy. Dee enjoyed this role very much. As a matter of fact, I believe he remained in this position until the day she died. He was fascinated with cryptography and loved word and letter puzzles. Dee was secretly known as “the queen’s eyes,” and he signed his dispatches to her with the stylized image of a handshading two eyes.

***

Yes, John Dee, on “her majesty’s secret service,” was the first agent 007.24 Dee possessed the largest private library in England and was constantly enlarging it. He was perhaps the most educated man of his day. Part of his education included esoteric philosophy, Qabalah, alchemy, and magick—not illogical pursuits for a Renaissance magus. Magick, in particular, was a science to be explored and exploited. Dee wanted to talk to angels (as did the biblical patriarch Enoch) not only to discover the wisdom of the past and the secrets of the universe, but also, more immediately, to discover the secrets of Elizabeth’s enemies and brandish the power to magically manipulate the spiritual forcesthat control them. Dee wanted to be a magical spy.

His approach to magick (at least at first) was pretty standard procedure for the day. After bathing and dressing in clean clothes (extraordinarymeasures for the times—unless, of course, it was May, when many people of the day took their annual bath), he would enter a room set aside for the purpose. There he would drop to his knees before a consecrated table/altar and for a half hour or so pray fervently to God and His good angels, alternately reciting a litany of self-abasing confessions of his unworthiness to enter into the divine presence and boasting of his God-given right to do that very thing. With his consciousness duly exalted by prayer, he would then gaze into a crystal or a black mirror (a process known as scrying25) and wait to receive a vision.

In theory that’s how it was supposed to work. However, even though Dee was skilled at composing long and eloquent prayers, he was not very good at scrying. In 1581 he started to advertise for someone who was. He had a small measure of success with a handful of rented seers until March of 1582, when he made the acquaintance of one Edward Talbot. Talbot (who would soon confess that his name was actually Kelley) was an unemployed alchemist’s assistant and convicted forger. Kelley’s questionable character notwithstanding, his skills as a scryer immediately impressed Dee, who hired him on the spot at asalary of fifty pounds a year, a handsome figure for the day.

The partnership of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley would last until 1587. Their angelic-magick workings for the most part concluded in 1584. During their time together they engaged in hundreds of scrying sessions of varying lengths, in which Kelley gazed into a crystal ball or a black obsidian mirror and reported everything he saw and heard during a variety of angelic communications. Dee, sitting at a nearby table with pen and ink, led the questioning and recorded everything in anal-retentive detail.

Not all of the sessions yielded profound revelations. Indeed, many appear to be attempts by the communicating intelligences to simply keep the conversation going. There were numerous instances when information received in earlier sessions was amended (sometimes radically) in subsequent sessions. There were even times when the magicians were informed that they had been deceived in earlier communicationsby evil spirits. Nevertheless, the consistency of the bulk of the material is staggeringly impressive, and the double-/triple-blind nature in which it was delivered, especially the angelic language, calls, and magical tablets, boggles the imagination.

The Dee and Kelley years can be viewed as having occurred in three major phases, resulting in what appears on the surface to be three separateand unique magical systems. I will discuss these in more detail shortly. Here at the beginning it is enough to simply point out it is the third and last phase of their angelic workings (the three-month period between April 10 and July 13, 1584) that yielded the material for the system of vision magick that can be properly called Enochian.

The Enochian period was highly productive and bore much promise. In fewer than a hundred days Dee and Kelley received an angelic language, tablets containing the names of elemental and celestial beings, and calls in the angelic tongue that promised to unlock the secrets of heaven and earth. With sad, almost Faustian irony, however, once the Enochian material was in their hands, Dee and Kelley did notproceed to actually operate the system in subsequent workings.

They would go on to other magical adventures, attempting to impress (with little success) the crown heads of Europe with their supernatural counsel. Finally, after nearly five years of working together, years of exhausting magical sessions, and years of traipsing their families around Europe (not to mention a notorious wife-swapping incident), familiarity finally bred contempt, and the two magicians parted company withoutever getting into the driver’s seat of Enochian  magick and turning the key.

Dee’s complicated life would draw him back to the English court and the distracting world of political intrigue and survival. In 1588, as the Spanish armada set sail to annihilate England’s much smaller fleet (an event Dee predicted years earlier), Elizabeth called again upon her Merlin. Dee shocked her courtiers by urging the queen to not engage the Spanish armada and keep her ships at bay, prophesizing that a mighty storm would scatter and destroy the Spaniards. Elizabeth wisely heeded Dee’s words. The storm manifested right on cue, and in the chaos that followed, the Spanish armada went down to defeat. In many circles Dee was credited with magically raising the tempest that saved England. The story of this event became instant legend. William Shakespeare, writing only twenty-three years later, would use Dee asthe model for Prospero, the storm-raising magician in his play, The Tempest.

Kelley’s post-Enochian years would not earn him such renown. His ambitions kept him on the continent, where he peddled the promise of alchemical treasures to the crown heads of Europe. He was knighted by Emperor Rudolph II of Bohemia but was shortly thereafter imprisoned by his royal patron for failing to manufacture alchemical gold. With fairy-tale panache, Sir Edward Kelley plunged to an untimely death inNovember of 1595 while attempting to escape from the turret of Emperor Rudolph’s prison tower.

Dee’s end was not so colorful. Elizabeth appointed him warden of Christ’s College in Manchester, but it was not a happy tenure. His wife (and, it is believed, several of his children) died there during the plague in 1605. Dee returned to his home at Mortlake, where his daughterKatherine cared for him until his death in late 1608 or early 1609.

How so many of Dee’s manuscripts survived to see the light of the twenty-first century is a magical wonder story in and of itself. Several of the most important documents Dee had hidden in the false bottom of a cedar chest (can we get much more romantic?), where they lay undiscovered for over fifty years after his death. Through a curious chain of events (that tragically saw a portion of the manuscripts baked as pie wrappings), the surviving material came to the attention of the illustrious antiquary, politician, astrologer, chemist, and Freemason, Alias Ashmole (1617–1692), one of the few people in the world capable of recognizing the importance of the discovery. Thanks to Ashmole, the material was catalogued and finally housed safely in his own museum at Oxford, the British Museum, and the British Library, where, over three hundred years after its  reception, it captured the attention of S. L. MacGregor Mathers, Wynn Wescott, and the adepts of the HermeticOrder of the Golden Dawn, then Aleister Crowley—and now you.

What is community?

I’ve been thinking about this subject for a while now.  The holidays are upon us, and for some, it is a time to help others who are less fortunate.

I myself, cannot afford healthcare.  I  limit my expenses and try my best to pay the bills.  Being that I am “self-employed”, I struggle with this on a daily basis.  Clearly-we all could use a little help. What might be less obvious, is that we can all offer a little help too.

Two weeks ago, I received a call from a friend who told me about a person who was in desperate need.

Jennie, who we affectionately call “The Hugging Goddess” is on full disability because of health reasons, and she was going to be evicted from her home.  Just one of her problems.

She had a leak in her kitchen.  It wound up rotting out the floors in the trailer home in which she lives.  Because of this, she lost her home insurance.  When hurricane Irene hit, she was flooded.  The water left garbage and downed trees all over her land and the house developed mold.  Then her furnace stopped working.  Now there was no hot water for showers and no heat to keep her home!  The whole trailer was being heated by space heaters.

She went to FEMA for help and was denied because she had no home insurance, and because of the condition of the land, the home association wanted to evict her.

Back to the original call…

Her friend Robin filled me in on what was going on.  I immediately put out a call for help to our pagan community.  Calls where made, The local press was contacted, and used social media (Facebook, Blogger, Twitter) in order to get the word out.  With 24 hours, committees where set up, donations of material and money started coming in, and a cleanup crew was sent to Jennie’s home!

In 2 days, the entire lawn was cleaned up, dead trees where cut down, the furnace was fixed, and a shed was rebuilt.  In the weeks to come, the rotted floors will be replaced, and new ones will be laid down with all the donations of wood, tile and money that came in.  Looking into finding used kitchen cabinets for her as well.

Jennie came into the store to thank me!  She gave me her famous hugs, got all “teary” and tried to give me the last $3 in her pocket! Very emotional…What is community?  It’s about the love we give one another.  It’s about caring and hugs.  It’s about honoring the Goddesses and Gods within each other.  It’s about the pagan community that I am soo blessed to have here!

Many thanks to Bernadette for sharing this story!

Blessings to each and every one of you this holiday season. May the days to come bring you health, happiness, and comforts to enjoy and to share.

Seriously – ALL day.  Granted, sometimes I’m thinking about lunch, or the lovely person at the Dunkie’s drive-through who smiles at me every morning and makes the world a little less lonely and cold even before the caffeine hits my system.  Sometimes I’m thinking about bills, or aging parents, or kids growing up and growing away. But mostly I’m thinking about books. It is both an occupational hazard and a predisposition. And I’ll wager than anyone reading this also spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about books.  Go ahead… admit it.

So what does that mean? How does uncontrolled bibliophilia affect one’s outlook on life?

Let the ramble commence!

When I was in college (hundreds of years ago) I took a Comparative Literature seminar called “The Problem Wife” – a fabulous (exhausting) syllabus, focused and highly literate classmates,  and an amazing teacher. I can honestly say that the class changed the way I see the world and myself. It also changed what I read and how I read -  in part because of the material, but also in part because of a few words of advice the professor gave at the end of the semester. She looked around the table at her eager and intense young students and said. “If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be this – don’t live your life like it’s a novel.”  We were dumbstruck. That was, of course, exactly what we wanted to do.  The world waited for us, with drama and passion and adventure and tumult! And even though most of the “problem” wives we’d read about ended up dead (usually by their own hands) they had lived, really lived!  What the professor brought to our attention in that one, deflating statement, was that, no – these women had not lived. The consequences of their passions and misdeeds were as fictional as the acts themselves, existing only on the page and in the minds of the readers. We live in the physical world, where structure and narrative are artificial constructs that don’t neatly apply to the changing nature of personality, influence, and circumstance.

Fiction is great. It entertains, informs, and yes, helps to shape the way we think about the world. But it is not a place to live.

So, WHAT exactly are you getting at Ankhie? Excellent question, patient reader. My point in this ramble is to say that no book is a blueprint for living. No one book, that is. To truly live, we must fill our years with a rich variety of experience, and our minds with a rich variety of thought. The latter can be accomplished by reading often and reading well.

I don’t regret a single book I’ve read (well…), or a single moment spent thinking about them. Now, how many things in life can you say that about?

So go forth, intrepid lovelies, and read. Read everything!

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” – Lemony Snicket

One step shy of superstition, two steps shy of actual magic.

Yes. Actual magic. To be effective, a magical  practitioner must wholly believe in the power of sympathetic associations and correspondences. It is, after all, a spiritual tradition grounded in the tangible world. Whether you are a Hedge Witch or a Necromancer, the words and objects used to invoke the hidden realm must have power – power that you trust and believe in – in order for any spell or summoning to work. It’s that simple.  Things matter. Actions and words matter. You can theorize about magic all you want, but unless you work and see results on the physical plane, it is only theory.

Think about the house not burning down and chances are that everything will be fine. But pat the cat, and he will be roused and perhaps inspired to catch the mice that are just about to chew through the wires in your walls, wires that would have sparked against that old, dry insulation, burning down the house. It is a hair thin connection, but it is there.

Magical thinking is also a clinical symptom of several different types of mental disorders – schizophrenia and bi-polar being just two. Here we come to the meat of Ankhie’s ramble. I have a witchy friend who was diagnosed as bipolar many years ago (back when they called it manic depressive disorder) – she never embraced the diagnosis, refused to be medicated, and with the exception of occasional bouts of crazy has lived a pretty normal life. Magical thinking has always been an integral part of who she is. It was also part of what earned her that initial diagnosis. Recently things went kind of wrong for her and she went back into therapy. She also went on meds.  And they worked! She was surprised, and initially delighted by the results -she was calmer, happier, more productive and easier to be around. Yet somehow, she was also a lot less witchy. She started to lose interest in her practice. She started to question her beliefs. The magical thinking that had defined her and empowered a rather impressive record of spellwork, now seemed silly, remote. She still loves to read witchy tomes, but her interests are more academic.

Now, none of this is to imply that all magical folk are crazy (although we do have our stand-outs). The same ramble could have been written if my friend were a poet, or musician.  Magic, like art, requires a true leap of faith -  it’s power is found in that held-breath moment between the world we live in and the world we imagine. But with every leap there is the risk of a fatal fall. Every magical thinker, from Dion Fortune to Christian Day, has warned of the dangers inherent in occult practice. The doors we open cannot easily be closed again, and if we aren’t strong enough – mentally and physically – they will remain forever open, and the connections that work so well when we are in control start to tangle and bind us in hopeless knots.

So, does magic make you crazy? I don’t know. I do know that I am glad to see my friend “happy” but I miss the witch in her. And if I forget to pat the cat, I turn the car around and head back home.

from A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book by Ceisiwr Serith

***

Here we are, gathered on this wonderful holiday, among family and friends.

and all we can think is “thank you.”

Thank you to all those whose presence made this celebration possible,

and gratitude most of all to the Shining Ones,

whom we continually praise.

***

From A Book of Pagan Pray by Ceisiwr Serith

***

The gifts the gods give me are many and wonderful

and I am grateful to the gods for their generosity.

Knowing that it would be wrong to forget them,

I lift my voice in thankfulness.

Holy Ones, thank you, for all that you have done.

***

Standing in the presence of the mighty gods,

my mind is turned toward all I’ve been given.

I thank them, as is only their due,

for they pour out blessings on all their children.

***

Thanks to my patron for my continued prospertity,

for my continued health, for my continued life.

Continually I will pray to you,

always remembering you.

***

From A Grateful Heart, ed. M.J. Ryan

***

O  Great Spirit

Whose voice I hear in the winds,

And whose breath gives life to all the world,

hear me! I am small and weak, I need your

strength and wisdom.

Let Me Walk In Beauty, and make my eyes

ever behold the red and purple sunset.

Make My Hands respect the things you have

made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make Me Wise so that I may understand the

things you have taught my people.

Let Me Learn the lessons you have hidden

in every leaf and rock.

I Seek Strength, not to be greater than my

brother, but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.

Make Me Always Ready to come to you with

clean hands and straight eyes.

So When Life Fades, as the fading sunset,

my spirit may come to you without shame.

- Native American Prayer

***

May the suffering ones be suffering free

And the fear struck fearless be.

May the grieving shed all grief -

And the sick find health relief.

-Zen Chant

***

The food is brahma (creative energy)

Its essence is vishnu (preservative energy)

The eater is shiva (destructive energy)

No sickness due to food can come

To one who eats with this knowledge.

- Sanskrit Blessings, tranl. Baba Hari Dass

***

The sun brings forth the beginning

The moon holds it in darkness

As above, so below

For there is no greater magic in all the world

than that of people joined together in love.

- Wiccan Blessing

***

May we walk with grace

and may the light of the universe

shine upon our path.

- Anonymous

***

All Life Is One

And Everything that Lived is Holy

Plants, Animals and People.

All must eat to live and nourish one another

We bless the lives that have died to give us this food.

Let us eat together

Resolving by our work to pay the debt of our existence.

- John Bennett

***

Now may every living thing, young or old, weak or

strong, living near or far, known or unknown, living or

departed or yet unborn, may every living thing be full

of bliss.

- The Buddha

 ***

Blessings All!

- Ankhie

Which brings me to a little non-sense that, were it any other time of year, I would probably just ignore.

One of the results of working for an occult publisher (and having occult interests) is that whenever something weird happens, I immediately start thinking about possible paranormal explanations. I would make a terrible ghost hunter for that very reason. Yet I’m not unreasonable. Although spirit-doings may be my knee-jerk reaction, I do seek (and usually find) some perfectly logical cause for the anomaly.

Scratching in the ceiling? Noisy Ninja Mice.

Candles relighting after they have been blown out? Hot wax pooling and a still-smouldering wick.

Dog acting weird and hiding under the sofa? A missing stick of butter from the kitchen counter and an unspeakable mess in the living room.

But every once in a while things happen that defy logic – every investigative turn a dead end. Like the mist that occasionally appears late at night, moving through the first floor rooms of the house. Or the recent disappearance of sweet and shiny things; chocolates, pastries, silver rings, a hand-beaded keychain. The members of Chez Ankhie have been fully interrogated and all proclaim their innocence. Although I am reluctant to give them the benefit of the doubt on the sweet-related front, there was, just yesterday, a donut that disappeared from a closed bag while the whole family was out. Now, said Ninja Mice are very, very clever (I have previously griped about their super-mousam skills of evasion) but I seriously doubt that they could open a bag, remove the donut, re-close the bag and leave not a trace of crumb or poo.  Seems silly, I know. But it’s something new every day, and I’m scouring my brain and my library for information on nefarious otherkin who steal donuts and shiny accessories.  So far I have come up with nothing, although I am inclined to think it’s house fairies.

What say you, learned readers. If it’s not sneaky critters or fibbing family members, then who or what?

Hi Varla. Thanks for taking time to chat! I thought we could talk about the Magical Creatures series in the new Weiser e-book Collection. You curated this group as well as the Paranormal Parlor series. How did this gig come about?

 Well, Jan Johnson, the publisher over at Weiser Books just called me up one day and said she had a new idea and could I come for tea? Weiser has published The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre and they have been pretty successful and I guess my penchant for collecting and my eye for the unusual or strange made her think I’d be the right person to curate! It has been great fun.

Was the decision to split the collection into these two series a publisher decision or a curatorial one?

Both. Originally they asked me to do the Magical Creatures but then I found a great deal of paranormal stuff that I liked and we kind of mutually came up with the Paranormal Parlor collection.

 In your own occult collection (which I know is vast) are you more inclined toward the paranormal or the monstrous? Or is that like asking you which child you prefer?

Worse. It’s like asking me who I’d rather date, Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi.

My first question about this series is a fairly obvious one. What distinguishes a magical creature from, say, an ordinary house-pet?

Magical Creature is the marvelous umbrella term for fairies, elves, gnomes, imps, mermaids, werewolves, vampires, and more. Your house-pet may well be a magical creature–you never know what they are up to when you are not around. Your cockatiel might just be a shapeshifter in disguise! A Magical Creature is a description of a being of folklore or myth but I’d like to invite readers to throw out the idea of real vs. myth. Sometimes it is just a matter of how keen your eye is, or how observant you are. You may not have seen them, but I can pretty much guarantee that you have been seen by them. And they have the magical ability to reveal themselves only to select people, and grant them riches or curse their first born.

There are two books in this series that focus on the undead as their subject matter. Vampyre – a Tale, and The Mummy and Miss Nitocris.

Starting with Vampyre; this story has quite a literary legacy. Could you tell us briefly how it came to be written?

Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft (Shelley) were reading ghost stories aloud to one another one stormy night at Byron’s lake house in Geneva, Switzerland. Byron prompted his partygoers to write a ghostly tale of their own. Out of this came the beginnings of Frankenstein, a Modern Prometheus.  As it happened, John William Polidori was also there that fated night. Personal physician to Lord Byron and a writer as a past time, Polidori crafted The Vampyre, A Tale from a sketch of a story that Byron composed that same evening. Often wrongly advertised as a story by Byron himself, The Vampyre has remained a relatively obscure tale of terror. The first vampire story published in English, Polidori’s work predates the seminal Bram Stoker’s Dracula by more than seventy years!

So this is one of the first vampire stories written for the entertainment of the reading public? How was it received in its day?

I think it probably was fairly well received, at least at first, because of its association with Byron. When it was first published several printings were mistakenly identifying Byron as the author. I guess back then you could just poach something pretty easily and print it. Also the publicity confused matters, saying that Lord Byron was the author but he was embarrassed by it and denied it. That wasn’t really true, though we really don’t know the ultimate truth. I kind of think of Polidori as this doctor to the stars who wished he was one himself. And so he made it happen. Would it have happened if he hadn’t known Lord Byron? Probably not. It is entertaining, but admittedly Polidori was not the master of language that Lord Byron was.

What do you think Polidori would have thought of today’s sparkly teenaged vampire heartthrobs?

He would have probably wanted to inject them with some kind of slow poison that first robbed them of their sparkle and then stopped their heart.

I think I love him!

The mummy hasn’t fared as well as the vampire in the public’s affections, but it was enormously popular at the time The Mummy and Miss Nitocris was published. What do you think accounts for that decline?

We know too many of the facts about the Pharaohs and the Egyptians. Back in late 1800s and the early part of the 1900’s we were still going about raiding the tombs and rumors of curses were rampant. Now we have all of these scientific facts getting in the way of our imaginations. Also, you have to be an Ancient Egyptian to become a mummy. A vampire is much more communicable. One bite, and bam! You are in.

We know that mummies are real (though not perhaps in the way that George Chetwynd Griffith meant), but you also mention in your introduction to The Werewolf that there is a scientific basis for that phenomenon, at least in part. Can you tell us a little more?

There is a rare but very real disease now called clinical lycanthropy. Those diagnosed believe themselves to able to transform into a non-human animal, specifically a wolf.

You also talk in that introduction about the difference between vampires and werewolves. Vampires are frightening but also, let’s face it, kind of sexy, whereas there is something sympathetic, even pitiful about the werewolf. Why is that?

Well, there is something kind of lusty about a bite on the neck. We might have some sympathy for the poor immortal vampire, but overall we kind of want to be a vampire ourselves. Live forever, make out with other vampires with dark hair and pale skin. I’ll keep it G-rated here, but certainly we’ve all had a hickey here or a love bite there?

But werewolves, in many cases, seem to not want to be what they are. And they have this more pathetic help-me kind of vibe, I guess it’s the dog in them. Vampires are very civilized but werewolves have an uncontrolled wild streak. You can put pants on them, but as soon as the full moon comes round they are going to dash the pants and run out into the yard howling and foaming at the mouth. They can’t hide what they are. I’ve dated both and I can’t tell you which I prefer. They both have merits.

Now for my favorite title The Occult Power of Goats (I want that on a tee-shirt) – this is really a fantastic compendium of British and Welsh Faerie tales. Most everyone reading this knows the difference between Fairy Tales and tale of the Fae, but for the sake of clarity what makes these stories chilling and not really for children?

These are old-world fairies that prey on children, or expect payment, or play tricks. They aren’t all evil, but there is no Prince Charming here. There are things you can’t outrun and creatures that lure you into their kingdom. Ultimately, the fairy gets rewarded for trapping mortals so don’t expect the fairies with sparkling wings and cute figures. They’ll take whatever form necessary to get you, but once they have you, you will most assuredly regret being so foolish. These are goblins, brownies, imps, selkies, and other mythological members of the fairy world.

I know that there are a lot of people in both the old world and the new that believe wholeheartedly in the Fae. There is also a modern witchcraft tradition known as Feri, and a Faery Pagan movement. It may seem a silly question, but can you tell us briefly what the difference between them is?

Actually, as I understand it, the modern magical traditions attempt to work in harmony with unseen forces from the fairy kingdom. They are also really into fairies, so they probably wear wings to all the pagan conventions and such. All witches work with unseen forces, but I think the fairy traditions specifically use the trickery and magic of the types of creatures that appear old-school tales like those in Occult Powers of Goats. But I’m no expert on the magical practice part. I just like to scare people.  

And scare them you do!

As always you are an amazing resource Varla, and this is a fabulous collection. Will there be more titles to come?

But of course! There are some upcoming fun things like a Christmas Troll, always more mermaids, and a great collection of Pooka stories. I’ve got about two-thousand potential titles that I am trying to narrow down, so it will keep going as long as Weiser sees fit!

Excellent news! Thanks Varla!

Want more Varla? Check out her Blog of the Bizarre and on The Huffington Post!

If you are a Nook reader, the Weiser Collection can be found here.

The Collection is coming soon to iPad and other e-readers everywhere!

The result is a group of digital books that will inform, enlighten, surprise, and scare the pants off you. Perfect. They are inexpensive  (starting at $2.99)  and are currently available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and soon (very soon) most other e-reader platforms.

Intrigued? Of course you are. So, because Ankhie loves you, here’s a taste of some serious weirdness from A Haunting in Paris:

Utter night: the last flicker of the lantern was gone. I sat and waited; my mind was still keen, but how long would it last? There was a limit even to the endurance of the utter panic of fear.

Then the end began. In the velvet blackness came two white eyes, milky, opalescent, small, far away,—awful eyes, like a dead dream. More beautiful than I can describe, the flakes of white flame moving from the perimeter inward, disappearing ending flow of opal water into a circular tunnel. I could not have moved my eyes had I possessed the power: they devoured the fearful, beautiful things that grew slowly, slowly larger, fixed on me, advancing, growing more beautiful, the white flakes of light sweeping more swiftly into the blazing vortices, the awful fascination deepening in its insane intensity as the white, vibrating eyes grew nearer, larger.

Like a hideous and implacable engine of death the eyes of the unknown Horror swelled and expanded until they were close before me, enormous, terrible, and I felt a slow, cold, wet breath propelled with mechanical regularity against my face, enveloping me in its fetid mist, in its charnel-house deadliness.

With ordinary fear goes always a physical terror, but with me in the presence of this unspeakable Thing was only the utter and awful terror of the mind, the mad fear of of a prolonged and ghostly nightmare. Again and again I tried to shriek, to make some noise, but physically I was utterly dead. I could only feel myself go mad with the terror of hideous death. The eyes were close on me,—their movement so swift that they seemed to be but palpitating flames, the dead breath was around me like the depths of the deepest sea.

Suddenly a wet, icy mouth, like that of a dead cuttle-fish, shapeless, jelly-like,fell over mine. The horror began slowly to draw my life from me, but, as enormous and shuddering folds of palpitating jelly swept sinuously around me, my will came back, my body awoke with the reaction of final fear, and I closed with the nameless death that enfolded me.

Cram, Ralph Adams; Ventura, Varla (2011-10-03). A Haunting in Paris, A Truly Terrifying Tale: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection 

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

View the whole collection (so far) here.

And in the meantime, if you know of any great, forgotten, out-of-print spooky books, let us know! Varla is hungry for more!

Coming soon – an interview with the woman herself!